Special issue focuses on PURE results

16, 2017

A special issue entitled ‘Pesticide use and risk reduction with IPM’ of the international journal Crop Protection has recently been published. The special issue is the fruit of the research collaboration conducted within the European Union’s PURE project (Pesticide Use and-risk Reduction in European farming systems with Integrated Pest Management), coordinated by Françoise Lescourret (pictured right), a well-known scientist affiliated to INRA, one of ENDURE’s leading partners.

The breadth of PURE was very wide in terms of European institutions, farming systems, agroecological conditions and scientific disciplines and approaches. This meant that PURE provided a unique opportunity to address almost all facets of IPM research, explained Françoise.

Integrative research was at the core of the project’s work on the design and evaluation of IPM solutions and the implication of stakeholders, especially through co-innovation processes, was a major concern. But the biological (for example, biocontrol, agroecological engineering, and pest evolution), technological, and methodological (for example, models) dimensions of IPM solutions were also addressed. All this created a synergy which supported the project’s ambitious goal.

The special issue has been edited by ENDURE scientific officer Jay Ram Lamichhane. “I feel honored to be invited to be guest editor of this special issue and I would personally like to thank Françoise Lescourret and all the colleagues involved within the PURE project who very efficiently liaised with me to finalise the special issue,” said Jay Ram, pictured below right.

“The papers in this issue show that a lot of progress is being made in the development of innovative crop protection systems that help reduce pesticide use and the consequent risk in European farming systems.”

The special issue brings together 17 papers, including an editorial and an introduction to the PURE project written by Jay Ram Lamichhane and Françoise Lescourret respectively, 12 original articles and three review articles. The full contents are as follows:

Pesticide use and risk reduction in European farming systems with IPM: An introduction to the special issue. Author: Jay Ram Lamichhane

Toward a reduced use of pesticides in European farming systems: An introduction to the PURE project. Author: Françoise Lescourret

The efforts made within the PURE European project and the results presented in this issue provide a telling example of how a transnational networking approach can produce reliable scientific and technical data which is useful to support policy frameworks.